As apps and streaming services gradually serve more ads to viewers, the adtech startup Pulse plans to help small businesses capitalize on this trend by allowing them to access this ad inventory with a self-serve ad platform like the ones small businesses use to run ads on Google or Meta services.
The startup recently raised a $22.5 million funding round led by Paris-based VC firm Singular. Other investors include; Olive, Motier Ventures and several business angels.
While Meta and Google clearly dominate online ad revenue, connected TVs and streaming services represent a growing segment with some untapped potential for adtech companies. But it’s a fragmented market with different streaming apps, channels and live sports leagues.
Vibe has signed agreements with some of these companies (or some of their partners) so that they open some of their ads to Vibe customers. “Overall, we can access all the streaming apps and channels that are currently available except for Hulu, Netflix and YouTube TV,” Vibe co-founder and CEO Arthur Querou told me.
But even if you strip out the big names, there are quite a few different ad-supported streaming services, such as FAST (free ad-supported TV streaming) services like Pluto, big OTT platforms like Fubo, and of course the broadcasters themselves like Paramount. Warner Bros., CNN, etc.
“We’ve been very close to Comcast, which owns FreeWheel, a large platform that has created a kind of marketplace for all these stocks. We have Benjamin Antier on the board — he’s the founder of Publica, the largest ad server for streaming apps. We also have Ari Paparo, the founder of Beeswax which was acquired by Comcast, on the board. Let’s be honest, it’s very political and very much about your personal network,” Querou said.
The reason why the Vibe team has been able to convince a wide range of partners that they should work with Vibe is that Arthur Querou is a technology veteran. After you create MotionLead and sell it to Adikteevpartnered with Franck Tetzlaff, co-founder of Doctolib and former CTO of Frichti, to create an adtech company called KMTX.
This semantic targeting company was acquired by Seedtag in 2022. Following this exit, the duo teamed up once again to create Vibe. They decided to refocus on adtech because they know and love the industry. “It’s a bit like the perfect sandbox. You have a lot of data, it’s a real market, you have the ability to make decisions… You can do whatever you want,” Querou said.
Addressing the long queue with 2,000 customers already
Part of Vibe’s selling point is that the platform unlocks some untapped potential with small and medium-sized businesses. While apps and streaming services are already talking to the likes of Coca-Cola or Ford for a small portion of their annual advertising budgets, it’s a little harder to reach small and medium-sized businesses.
With Vibe, car dealerships, plumbers and restaurants create their advertising campaign directly. Using Vibe’s ad platform is quite simple. After choosing the streaming apps and channels you want your ads to appear on, you can choose a geographic region and an audience based on various interests.
Then you need to upload the video asset, approve it and you’re good to go. Vibe also provides a performance dashboard that lets you track how much you spent, cost per impression, and other standard ad metrics.
More than 2,000 US companies have already used Vibe. While the startup didn’t want to share the exact revenue number, Vibe generated eight-figure revenue in 2023. There are 40 employees working for the company and it plans to grow to 110 people by the end of the year.
The team will spend some time on behind-the-scenes optimizations, including better targeting capabilities based on first-party data and automated campaign optimization.
As for competition from Google and Meta? Arthur Querou thinks that won’t be a problem. Meta focuses primarily on advertising space on its own social media platforms. And Google, “on the one hand, publishers have learned their lesson and don’t necessarily want to go the same way they did with Google on the web. And on the other hand, streaming also competes with YouTube,” he said.
